Chart JS + Laravel - How to add 0 to array - php

Question

Employees and Projects
I have a pivot table where my code is grabbing all the projects that an employee is assigned to and the stage they are in.
Stages
Waiting
In Progress
Launched
This works and I get the chart to show the data if the employee has projects in each stage. However, when there are not projects in every stage, the array gets messed up and the bar graph shows the data but in the wrong part. For example:
Array that works: [2, 4, 2]
2 Waiting
4 In Progress
2 Launched
Array that doesn't work: [5]
0 Waiting
0 In Progress
5 Launched
In the second case, since the array only has one value, the 5 is shown under Waiting and not launched. How do I add 0's and get the array to show [0, 0, 5]?
Thanks.
$projects = Project::join('employee_project', 'projects.id', '=', 'employee_project.project_id')
->where('employee_project.employee_id', $id)
->groupBy('stage')
->select('stage', DB::raw('count(*) as total'))
->orderByRaw('case
when stage = "Waiting" then 1
when stage = "In Progress" then 2
when stage = "Launched" then 3
end')
->get();
foreach ($projects as $project) {
$t[] = $project->total;
}
$t = json_encode($t);
Updated Code
foreach ($projects as $project) {
if ($project->stage == 'Waiting') {
$t[0] = $project->total;
} elseif ($project->stage == 'In Progress') {
$t[1] = $project->total;
} elseif ($project->stage == 'Launched') {
$t[2] = $project->total;
} else {
$t[] = 0;
}
}
$t = json_encode($t);
This updated code gives me an associative array like {"1": 4, "2": 5}. ChartJS can't use the associative array. It needs an array like [0, 4, 5].
Also, the associative array doesn't include the 0's.
NEW UPDATE
foreach ($projects as $project) {
if($project->total > 0) {
$t[] = $project->total;
} else {
$t[] = 0;
}
}
This doesn't work either. Any ideas?

Answer 1

So I figured it out. I just had to add an array initializing it. Here is the code:
$t = [0,0,0];
foreach ($projects as $project) {
if($project->stage === 'Waiting') {
$t[0] = $project->total;
} elseif($project->stage === 'In Progress') {
$t[1] = $project->total;
} elseif($project->stage === 'Launched') {
$t[2] = $project->total;
} else {
$t[] = $t;
}
}
$t = json_encode($t);